Wednesday, June 07, 2017

In Search of The Real Americans...

Have you noticed that, by and large there seem to be only three"voter" stories in the press anywhere anymore?

First, there are endless stories in both the Elite Liberal Conspiracy Media and the "God Damn that Elite Liberal Conspiracy Media!!" media about how the Elite Liberal Conspiracy Media has looked down its snooty, aristocratic nose at the fee-fees of Real Murrican Trump voters for too long because the average Real Murrican Trump voter is, y'know, a dum-dum.

From Liberals like Michael Tomsky, who, when the going gets tough, can be counted on to not only give your Liberal lunch money and mine away to the schoolyard bully, but go the extra mile to find a reason why it's your own damn fault that the bully is a bully to begin with.

Elitism Is Liberalism’s Biggest Problem

There are plenty of non-deplorables in middle America. The Democrats need to learn how to embrace them.

The liberal contempt for middle America is baked into the idea of identity politics.

Nine years after Barack Obama accused small-towners of clinging to guns or religion, nearly
three years after Jonathan Gruber was shown to have attributed ObamaCare’s passage to the stupidity
of the American voter, and eight months after Hillary Clinton pronounced half of Donald Trump’s voters “irredeemable,” Democrats are now getting some sophisticated advice: You don’t win votes by showing contempt for voters.

In the last week or so a flurry of articles have appeared arguing for toning down the looking-down. In the New Republic Michael Tomasky writes under the heading “Elitism Is Liberalism’s Biggest Problem.” Over at the New York Times, Joan C. Williams weighs in with “The Dumb Politics of Elite Condescension.” Slate goes with a Q&A on “advice on how to talk to the white working class without insulting them.” Stanley Greenberg at the American Prospect writes on “The Democrats’ ‘Working-Class Problem,’ ” and Kevin Drum at Mother Jones asks for “Less Liberal Contempt, Please.”...

Then there are many stories in the Elite Liberal Conspiracy Media about how it is oh-so-sloooowly dawning on some of the aforementioned Real Murrican Trump voters that they have complete screwed themselves.

They're on Obamacare, they voted for Trump, and they're already disappointed

But they’re still voting Republican.

CORBIN, Kentucky -- There have been no marches against the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare here. No raucous town halls. There was only one protest rally anywhere in the region. Photographs captured a solitary woman holding a sign.

In an area that stands to lose a lot of health coverage under the GOP’s American Health Care Act, the silence does not equal endorsement. It is a sign, instead, of disappointment setting in among a group of conservative voters who only months ago were bubbling with hope for Donald Trump’s health care plan.

The uninsured rate here in this rural swath of southeastern Kentucky has plummeted faster under the Affordable Care Act than any other area in the country. I visited the area last winter and talked to Obamacare enrollees who voted for Trump. They expected the president to repeal the law and replace it with something much better. “That man has a head for business,” one enrollee told me. “He will absolutely do his best to change things.”

I went back this spring just after the House passed the AHCA, the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare that would cause 23 million fewer Americans to have health coverage, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. The optimism was gone. Resignation had replaced it.

“You know, thinking about it, I’m not even sure what I expected. I just thought it would miraculously work out wonderful for everybody,” Bobbi Smith, a 62-year-old Obamacare enrollee who voted for Trump, says. “So I guess maybe I didn’t put enough thought into what I would expect from a health care act.”...

Any thought, Bobbi. You didn't put any though into what you "would expect from a health care act." But of course, drawing any conclusions about Bobbi's, y'know, staggering ignorance and complete incompetence as a citizen would be wrong.

So terribly, terribly wrong.

And finally, there are the very lazy "some on the Left" stories which spotlight the concerns of a tiny number of Very Loud Purity Angels who are still furious with Democrats for not going all-in for President Nader.

Live from the Mos Eisley cantina, via WaPo, and with emphasis added for your protection:

As Democrats prep for Comey, some on left want them to give up Russia story

By David Weigel June 6 at 11:53 AM

...Max Blumenthal, a dogged reporter working with the Baltimore-based Real News Network...

For four minutes, until the congressman was pulled away by a staffer, an award-winning journalist with bylines at the Nation and Salon asked whether he’d been telling bellicose lies about Russia and the Trump team. “Why aren’t we talking about jobs or racism?” Blumenthal asked.

“We are in a new cold war with Russia that is totally unjustified given the facts,” said Dan Kovalik, a labor lawyer and author of “The Plot to Scapegoat Russia”...

“False thrillers will now be written about the Russians hacking the American elections,” wrote director Oliver Stone... Stone, who wrote a blurb for “The Plot to Scapegoat Russia,” is now promoting his own sit-down interviews with Putin...

“The Democrats are doing precisely what Trump is doing, arguing against things and not for anything,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director of National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association, and a critic of the Democrats’ Russia focus. “They don’t forward policies, they react to what they conceive of as red meat."...

...to the skeptics on the left, Democrats were making little real headway. Michael Tracey, a reporter for the Young Turks...

And although it is not a "voter story" I would be remiss if I did not include in the general category of "Stupid Political Stories About Which Apparently We Can Never Hear Enough" the endless, endless tales of how "Campus Liberals Are Ruining Murrica Just Like Trump!!" from Respectable Conservatives in the mainstream media.

Because without false equivalences, the poor babies would have no equivalences at all.

Political biology on American college campuses: The left's angry young devour the liberal old

...

But with all those ripe, idiotic presidential figs falling into pundits' hands, journalism has been somewhat distracted from the Democratic tension on college campuses.

What happened to the Republicans years ago—a collapse of the middle ground — is now happening to the Democrats, and it bears watching too.

So what shall we call it?

We might find the answer in the remarks of Robespierre, a student of the use of fear and the mob. But who reads European history anymore?

...

You know who gets virtually no ink or pixels or camera time or anything, anywhere? Any of those 66 million American who went to the polls last November and gave Hillary Clinton a clear and resounding popular vote victory. You know, boring old America Democrats. Average Joe Liberals and Jane Progressives, of every color, creed and class, in every state in the union.

To remedy this situation. for an hour each day I sit on my porch right here in the middle of Middle America, whittling, sipping corn likker from my jug, wearing my Toby Keith tee-shirt and watching as vans carrying the New York Times Action Zeitgeist Team and the Washington Post Heartland Rapid Response Squad whiz past looking for Real Murricans to whom they can abjectly apologize, and from whom they have promised their editors they can glean golden ingots of home-spun wisdom about the wilderness out here beyond the Potomac and the Hudson.

15 comments:

Wow. I would have thought that John Kass had been put out to pasture by now, or possibly, have moved on to that newsroom in the sky. Does he still see himself as the heir to Royko, and mistaking curmudgeoness (if it's not a word, it is now) for intelligent insight.

My favorite stories are any that contain non-ironic uses of the term "establishment," which has fast become every dipshit's favorite binky. I grew up in rural western Kansas, I currently work as an agricultural laborer, I've never had any connection with American politics (save a brief stint in the Young Democrats in which I did precisely fuck-all) and I don't believe I've ever so much as met a national politician. But I also don't favor turning the Democratic Party into a tributary state under Saint Bernard of Vermont so I'm "establishment."

And while we're here, what the fuck is up with all the pro-Putin purity progs? Look, I anticipated that these gomers might end up turning into an auxiliary of the ethnic party that is the GOP base, but I did not see these people joining Putin's cult. Where the fuck is this coming from? Some of them are gunning for a cheap buck, but Oliver fucking Stone can't be that desperate. Is this all because Putin possesses the corporeal form of Edward Snowden, The Great Prophet Come To Cleanse This Unworthy Nation Of The Sin Of The Demon Lord Obama? Is that how much this ouroboros has been fucking itself in the past decade?

I guess it's too boring for "real" reporters and pundits to sit down every day and write, "It seems that, once again, 66 million Americans were smart enough and motivated enough last November to go to the polls and vote for Hillary Clinton, fully intending to spare us from the hell we are now experiencing."

The Kevin Drum article is pretty irritating, because he's usually much better than that. He goes through an explanation of the Big Sort to establish how elites and non elites don't interact anymore. And then tells Liberals, a term he is now conflating with elites, to stop being so mean. Well if these groups don't encounter each other in the wild anymore, how is this awful, awful condescension being transmitted? By right wing media, of course. Nobody in rural America would ever know or care about safe spaces or trigger warnings or an undergrad at Claremont McKenna getting censured for using ableist language in an essay unless Fox and Rush told them about it. Maybe Kevin has the magic phrasing to convey the idea of "Hey, you 'moderates', is this really the team you're on? Could you, maybe, give that some thought before you vote?" And the whole bait and switch of using liberal and elite as if they mean the same thing is simply astounding once I noticed the work that was doing in his argument.

There are too many fact-based, logical ways to deconstruct the talking point that Trump supporters are mainly working class regular Joes, and that criticism from the Left is by Liberal elites being condescending to the unwashed salt of the Earth.

Point one might be that most of Trump's support comes from the Conservative upper middle class, who are just fine with fucking over their lessers for a lower tax bill.

Point two might be at worst anecdotal (social media) evidence that non-elite Liberals are the most full-throated traders in condescending smack talk about the goddamn knuckle draggers on the Right. Hell, there's plenty of evidence that angry/indignant lower/middle class Progressives are forcing the staid "elite" of the Left to shit or get off the pot.

In conclusion, this shit is happening in the streets, figuratively and literally.

Russians, hell Republicans moved America in the direction of communism when they shoved Citizens United into our laws. Oligarchy communism.

So odd how the very wealthy lose any value for America's Constitution.I imagine Neo Conservatives as well as neo liberals.

After the purity fires in the republican party there is no middle for anyone to reach out to. Even a very moderate center Dem are now chastised as being "the ::far left"My republican house member recently writes a word troubled letter in the paper to explain his vote on health care as a "rescue mission".he actually warned that the "Far left will be fear mongering health care".

In other words, dismiss any criticism.So his math of extracting $800 billion from health care makes it better. But he (like Trump) wants to give out tax breaks and spend more on Defense.So by his math,Extracting $800 billion from health care makes it better. Then extracting %2 trillion from the military defense spending must make the military better.

But see, my criticism is dismissed because I am fear mongering because, I am the Far Left..!Then again, Fiscal conservatism used to mean something (even if they never applied it). Again, this makes me the Far Left.

There are folks everywhere one can talk with rationally no matter their leanings. Then again, the purity trials of the GOP have left standing the most perverse extremists and sell outs. What the hell do you think this does to anyone that finds disagreement with their extremism when it is reflected into law that harms people.

And sit back and listen to your friendly neighborhood Ditto head bond with you.

It is tough to find someone that is not full of right wing hate talk to have that conversation with.Lordy lou, I try.

It would be like arguing on twitter with Trump that the Democrats are not responsible for nominating and clearing hurdles of his filling opening in government. To know, the GOP have majority control.Why don't conservatives go out and talk to their cray shit throwing base.

Put McConnell on TV with Alex Jones, Coulter, David From and Beck.Lets see them work things out.Stick Ryan on a panel with Kellyanne, the Pope, Pat Roberts and the bat shit Baptist church leader who goes around protesting at military funerals about the Gay is why they die.Let them reach out to each other. First. Before condemning someone like me for not reaching out for "para normal" conservative life entities.

The solid Trump base - around 27% - are never ever going to be open to any kind of change or even a rational conversation with their most hated of foes, the Liberals, aka Elites.

Doesn't matter how liberals/progressives/democratic voters behave towards Trump's base. They are the product of nearly 40 years of constant propagandizing brainwashing, the main gist of which is to never ever retreat from hating, despising, detesting, and loathing every single liberal/progressive/democratic voter just because. The end.

I can be as sweet as pie to these people. I can ignore them. I can call them the same kinds of names that they constantly and consistently call me, I can treat them like dirt. It doesn't matter. Nothing I do or say will change their minds or opinions. There's no effen way that they'll ever stop voting against their own interests in favor of the 1% screwing them over as long as they know that their Overlords will kick around liberals, darkies and other assorted horrible minorities.

No way to reach them. Don't bother to try. Say whatever you want about them, according to your personal needs and desires, because it's doesn't matter.

Who the so-called "liberals" or Democrats need to reach out to are those who do cross the aisle when they vote. For example, there is a sizeable contingent of voters who went for Trump this time, but who had previously voted for Obama twice. THESE are the people we need to communicate with and work with, but these voters clearly are more approachable and amenable to some sort of rational discussion.

Forget about the rest. And I'm sick and tired of being Lectured to about how I, as a so-called liberal, have to make nice and be oh so polite to Trump's moranic base and never say an unkind word to or about them. Screw that. Those people have been carefully taught to hate and detest me, sight unseen, and they say the ugliest, nastiest, meanest things to and about me. Two wrongs don't make a right. I rarely engage in kind with any of them. But spare me the Lectures about how so-called "liberals" are the ones who should ALWAYS be polite and gracious and speak kindly to these barbarians.

Unless or until Fox, Hate Radio & "Christiany" Broadcasting starts training their lemmings to treat so-called "liberals" or Democrats better and with respect that we deserve, spare me your condescending tripe.

No where, not even on Lawyers Buns & Money which one would think would focus on LAWS, have I seen or read about voter suppression as a contributor to Hillary's Electoral College defeat.

I mentioned this to my sister and her husband last weekend. He, normally easy-going, loudly said, they should have gotten IDs! I said, many are poor and / or elderly and don't drive. He said, I have an ID. I said, you drive. He said, your sister has an ID. I said, she drives. He said, you have an ID. I said, I drive. Why the national blind spot on un-American, and should be un-Constitutional, vote suppression laws?

Tom- same Con problem, here. Exactly. Their machinations on the electoral rollswith surgical precision and gerry-mandered districts too a la The Hammer DeLay- a sweetsmilin' so-called Christian, who, like the rest of the bastards has hi-jacked the name only of our sweet Lord for their own evil ends...fuck'em.

I really don't have to reach very far to reach out to white, working class voters, as I and most of the people I know are white, working class voters. We are elites only in that we call lies what they are. If that hurts your fee-fees, buck up, because the buggering the Republicans are busily administering is gonna hurt quite a bit more.